


Fair Dealing

by Alona



Category: Fly By Night Series - Frances Hardinge
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 13:11:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13008513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: In which the Queen of the Fairies obtains the services of a Poet, and Mosca Mye makes trouble.





	Fair Dealing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SlowMercury](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowMercury/gifts).



The fifth time Mosca tripped and twisted her ankle in the dark, she stayed where she had fallen.

The drift of dead leaves was soft and fragrant, and she was tired and scratched and bumped from running through the forest. Panic had driven her to seek its shelter – the villagers had been shooting at them. A piece of grapeshot had clipped the tip of Mosca's right ear. The side of her face was tacky with blood, and the wound stung. She had been too full of keening, fluttering fright to feel it earlier.

"Knew we should've left," she hissed into the dark. "They was onto us, and you just had to come over all superior and ignore me!"

There was no answer, for of course she was alone. She would have been glad of Eponymous Clent's company, if only for the chance to throttle him.

Gazing up, she spied a sliver of distant white moon through a crack in the black ceiling of trees.

She could not stay here.

Saracen was waiting for her at a farm on the other side of the forest. A girl with a goose, Clent had reasoned, was regrettably memorable. The farmer and his wife were kindly enough, and they had been adequately paid, but they would only wait so long before opting for a goose dinner.

Clent would be waiting, too, if he had not got himself shot or captured. And if he had…

Mosca was too tired and cross to contemplate a daring rescue.

From the pitch black forest around her came a rustle.

Someone – something – was moving out there. It was a soft noise, a stealthy noise – not Clent, then. An animal? A pursuer? The noise came closer, and surely Mosca would have seen a light by now, had it been a villager hunting her.

It would be upon her in a minute if she stayed where she was. Carefully she got to her feet. Her ankle gave dull stab but held her.

A thick animal reek, hot and dangerous, wafted over her. A whole menagerie of grinning, slavering beasts trampled through Mosca's head.

She bolted.

By good fortune she hit on a clear path. Branches grasped and tore at her, but her feet found open ground. She had lost all sense of direction, but she was going away, away from that small noise and that dangerous smell –

She collided headfirst with something warm and solid. Starbursts of pain jangled before her eyes.

"Who's there? What are you?"

The voice was young and female – but Mosca had not spoken. She had not run into an animal. She had bumped into another girl.

"I'm lost," she answered, through her daze.

"What are you doing in the forest?" The unseen girl's voice had sharpened with mistrust. Her accent was difficult to pinpoint. It was not how they spoke back in the village.

"I'm looking for my master," Mosca said, more or less mendaciously. "We was set upon by brigands on the road, and my master, he told me to run into the forest and save myself…"

It would be a difficult story to disprove, and it was a sight better than the truth: that they had been chased by a mob of villagers who had worked out that Mosca and Clent aimed to swindle them.

"But you're looking for him? A loyal dog," said the girl, with cold amusement that did not match the youth of her voice.

"I don't give two figs what happens to him," Mosca snapped.

"What does your master do?"

"He's a poetical practitioner." Mosca felt a warning pang. "What's it to you? And who are you, anyway, and how d'you come to be in this forest?"

"A poet! How exotic! We don't see many of those in these parts. Is he any good?"

"So-so," Mosca admitted. "Still waitin' to hear why it's any of your business."

"Is it a crime to be curious?" the strange girl wondered. "I was on my way home. I live nearby. And I know the way out of the forest."

Mosca was canny enough to notice that none of these answers were answers at all, but she was short on options.

"Will you show me the way?"

"I could," said the girl. There was a brief sound of fumbling, followed by a sharp strike – then a flicker, and then a steady light, rather greenish, bloomed between the girl's cupped hands. Mosca saw no tinderbox and no lantern, but she could see the other girl at last. She was a couple of years older than Mosca, short and apple-cheeked, with wide-apart eyes that may have been grey. "That's better, isn't it?" she said. Her smile was sharp, out of place on that country-girl face. "Perhaps when I've helped you on your way, I shall take up with your poet. Would you object to that?"

"You're welcome to him," Mosca said dismissively. She felt at once that she had said the wrong thing. The green flames between the girl's hands seemed to be reaching for her.

"Safe passage out of the forest in exchange for one poet," said the girl, her voice turning crisp and businesslike. "A fair bargain, no? So be it."

 

There was a painful lump on Mosca's forehead. The morning sun shining on the stream-threaded meadow below her hurt her eyes. Squinting, she could make out the farm at the bottom of the meadow. She turned. Twenty paces behind her were the dim eaves of an ancient forest. It was a good thing she had avoided it – it looked nigh impassable even by day.

Or had she avoided it? Her arms were striped with fresh scratches, and the palms of both hands were skinned from recent falls. One of her ankles felt weak and wobbly. She brushed the tip of her right ear, drawing her fingers back with a wince: the grapeshot. Yes. The villagers had been shooting at her.

And then she had run all night through the brush and bracken by the roadside. No wonder she was a catalogue of injuries. With a last glance at the looming trees, she continued down the slope. The grass and the wildflowers grew thick and tall, and though it was nearly winter a smell of high summer clung to the meadow.

She stopped for a moment at the farmyard gate to nod to a beautiful carving of Goodman Thimblefeather, a graceful Beloved with a barn owl's mysterious moon-face.

The farmer's wife, a solid and boisterous personage, came running across the yard to meet her.

"Oh, heavens! Oh, Beloved preserve us all! Oh, Thimblefeather's mercy, look at the state of the child! All over blood, leaves in her hair, like a wild thing out of the Forest!"

"Ain't been in the forest," Mosca said, indistinctly, as the good woman dragged her to a pump and got to work with a washcloth, cleaning Mosca as roughly and competently as a cat with her kitten.

"Been in the Forest! Of course not, muffin! Thimblefeather shelter us – in the Forest, she says, the little – duck."

Mosca's lips twitched into a tired smile. "Where's my goose, mistress?"

"In the barn, my apple dumpling. He's made friends with our mean old cow."

Mosca doubted this very much and went to see for herself. She found Saracen and the cow locked in an uneasy truce. Saracen waddled importantly over to her at once. Overcome with relief at the sight of him, and dizzy with mortal weariness, Mosca all but collapsed into a water trough, arranged herself beside it, and fell fast asleep.

She woke with a fierce headache and the cow lipping at her wounded ear as Saracen complained bitterly. Mosca reached out a hand to soothe him.

Then she sat up. A terrible suspicion had gripped her as she slept.

The untouched meadow above the house. The couple drinking only from the well, despite the stream-rich meadow. The soft green ashfall of wrong-shaped memories in her head. The strange girl's sidestepping not-lies.

A carving of Goodman Thimblefeather, He Who Shelters the Babe from the Fair Folk.

Mosca stomped into the tiny farmhouse kitchen, where the farmer's wife was shaping dumplings and her rock-like spouse was whittling the head of a walking stick.

"What's wrong with the forest?" she said, before either of them could put in a word.

Husband and wife exchanged glances.

"The folk," rumbled the farmer.

" _What_ folk?" Mosca persisted.

The farmer's wife spoke haltingly. "The goodly folk – who live – in the Forest. They leave us alone – and we them – and in exchange – "

"Have off, woman," grunted her husband, "or she'll think you're a witch."

Mosca had heard enough. "Where do I find these fair folk?"

" _Find_ them!" the farmer groaned.

"You don’t want to go doing that, precious jam roll!" cried his wife.

"I've got to," said Mosca. "They've stolen away Mr. Clent."

 

More accurately, Mosca had let herself be gulled into bargaining Clent away.

 _That treacherous harpy!_ she thought angrily. _Getting into my head and moving things about like it was her own parlor! You just look sharp when I find your palace, fairy…_

Mosca's long shadow wavered over the meadow as she trudged back to the forest like a portent.

The farmer's wife was convinced that Mosca was going to her doom. The soft-hearted woman had even shed a few tears as she made up a parcel of bread and cheese for Mosca to take along. It had made Mosca feel decidedly awkward and renew her single-minded attention to putting back a slab of meat and cabbage pie, a mountain of potato dumplings, and two stewed apples. She was certainly not going hungry to meet her doom.

The farmer had given her a coil of rope and had agreed to watch Saracen a few days longer without additional pay, saying, "Won't matter, soon enough."

Mosca knew next to nothing of fairies and her entire plan lay in showing up at the fairy court and making trouble.

She had an elaborate picture of the court in her mind, built of all the finest places she had seen in life or in chapbook illustrations, stitched together and stretched out spindly and tottering, made glossy and translucent as a spun sugar cake topper, and peopled with delicate, sneering-faced people as colorful as butterflies. Among them, at the elbow of the deceitful fairy girl, she placed the declaiming figure of Eponymous Clent.

Even in her imagination Clent did not look any too put out by the rapt attention of elegant fairy lords and ladies. But then, Mosca was not rescuing him for _his_ sake; it was a matter of pride.

Still – _A poet! How exotic!_ the girl in the forest had said.

"Bet you anything they eat your soul out through your ear," Mosca growled.

As a rule she did not admit the existence of souls these days, but as a rule she did not walk into a forest at dusk to do battle with a passel of soul-eating fairies.

The tree line was upon her. Mosca plunged in without a halt, squaring her shoulders as she went. She held herself taught and ready, but nothing jumped out at her. The trees did not grow so thickly here, and there was still light enough to see her way, had she known it.

Fairies, Mosca knew, could not lie. The fairy girl had said she lived nearby, and while taking it for granted that her notion of distance was similar to Mosca's would be worse than foolish, it was at least something to go on. Mosca struck out the way she had come, back towards the hateful village.

She had been picking her way only a quarter of an hour when the branches overhead rustled. There was that animal smell again, the one that had sent her running. Mosa froze, listening.

There was a muffled thump just behind her.

"It _is_ you again, it is!"

The voice was booming and joyful and inhuman. Curiosity seized Mosca, but she dared not turn to look. She sensed something large padding very close to her. Its warm, snuffling breath was at her back.

"You _smell_ different," the big voice continued. "Last time it was blood and fear – now you smell like _food_. Do you have food?"

At least it had not asked her if she _was_ food. Heartened, Mosca reached into the parcel at her belt and broke off a piece of bread. She turned and cautiously extended the morsel, which was still steaming slightly from the oven. "Here's food."

The creature seized the piece of bread and threw it down on the ground, setting upon it like a happy dog – and it was like a dog, covered in pale fur, half-again as big as a greyhound and similarly lean and long-limbed. Its movements were more birdlike than doglike, though, and its fur had the crisp glossiness of feathers.

When the bread was gone, it raised its head. It had a clever round face with large golden eyes and a sort of beak. Mosca was reminded of Goodman Thimblefeather's carved barn owl countenance. She found herself warming to the strange creature.

"Oh, that's very good," it said. "Is there more? Why are you back?"

"That girl last night – " Mosca began.

Eagerly the creature broke in: "Her Majesty of Wood and Glade, you mean?"

"That was their _queen_? I sold Mr. Clent to the _Queen of the Fairies_?"

"Not so loud!" boomed the creature, frisking round her in agitation. "Not in here! Do you have any more of the good stuff?"

"Bread," said Mosca, biting back her dismay. "And I'll give you the rest if you help me get to the queen's court."

"Promise?" asked the creature, folding itself back onto its haunches. Seated that way, its golden eyes were level with Mosca's.

"It's a deal," said Mosca.

"A deal, a deal!" cried the creature, springing up and ahead. "This way, this way!"

Mosca scrambled after it. The creature was swift as breath, and she pursued it for some time through the ever-darkening, ever-thickening forest before catching up to it beside a still, black pond. It looked as fresh as if it had not twitched a muscle.

"Why are we going to the court?" it asked when it saw her beside it.

"To get my friend back," gasped Mosca.

"The one you sold to Her Majesty?"

"She tricked me!"

"They do that," the creature said wisely.

"She tried to make me forget!"

"It was very clever of you to remember. They eat memories, sometimes."

"What about souls?"

"Those, too," said the creature. "So hurry, hurry!" It dashed away once more.

" _Told_ you!" said Mosca, uncharitably, to the empty air. Then she pelted after her guide.

Whenever she came near to it, the creature it seemed to be talking to itself: "Ford the Hidden River… a stone from the Wandering Cavern… behind the falls…"

 

"Palpitattle's… _wings_ , you're fast!" gasped Mosca, doubled over and clutching a stitch in her side.

"Aren't I?" her bewildering new ally said complacently. "Quiet now. We're nearly there."

Mosca had walked through the boles of hollow oaks and waded barefoot through jewel-colored streams. She had stepped behind a crystal waterfall and crawled on elbows and knees through a pitch-black cavern. She had dropped a smooth pebble into a ravine like a crack reaching to the center of the world. And above all, breakneck and breathless, she had run. She had no idea how long it had all taken and suspected that they had been going, not deeper into the real forest, but nearer to Somewhere Else, where time was different.

She was fed up to the gills with magic.

"You've said we were nearly there twice now! So which is it, are we there or not!"

The creature tipped its head at her. It was disconcerting and rather fascinating how its face had no readable expressions. "Why are you angry at _me_?" it asked.

"You don't make sense!" Mosca raged. "And neither does any of the rest of this! Fairies in the forest eating folk and stealing their memories – talking bird-dog beasts running me off my feet – it's too much to expect anybody to handle!"

"You're just hungry," the creature said confidently.

"Just get me to the court," Mosca huffed.

"Here," it said, leading her through a screen of willow boughs to the foot of a massive drystone wall. "That's the outer wall. You get in through that crack at the bottom."

Mosca eyed the crack. It was not large. Visions of being trapped under the earth came to her. "Can't I climb over?"

"The walls meet at the top."

"No, they don't. I can see they don't."

"They do," said the creature. "Look up. Look close."

Mosca did. Shortly she wished she had not. Looking at the wall, she perceived it to be perhaps fifteen feet high. Looking where the top of the wall should have been, she saw only more wall. And so on. "Is there another way in?"

"There's the front gate. But you don't want to go that way."

Mosca agreed that she did not. "That's it, then." She took the rest of the loaf of bread from her parcel. "Here. Like I promised."

The creature bit the bread delicately out of her hand before attacking it with the same gleeful abandon as before. Mosca was surprised at the stab of regret she felt at leaving it behind.

"Bye," she said gruffly. "I didn't mean to yell."

Then she crouched down and squeezed herself through the crack under the wall. After a miserable few moments she emerged into the middle of a thorny bush, having added somewhat to her collection of cuts and scrapes. Cursing under her breath, she fought to the edge of the bush and looked around.

She was in a square courtyard bathed in grey light. The wall was on one side, and open archways lead to dim passages on the other three. The courtyard was filled with animals.

There were several chickens, a black goat and a white goat, a golden-haired dog rolling ecstatically in a pile of refuse, a fat grey pony with enormous white wings, and innumerable cats – cats of all colors of coat, arranged in all the range of feline attitudes, but all with silver eyes.

The courtyard was floored with colorful tiles that shone boldly where they were exposed but that were mainly covered in dirt and animals wastes, including heaps of feathers from the pony's wings, drifted like snow. At the center of the courtyard was a dry fountain, and on the lip of the fountain sat a man, or something that resembled a man. He had long white hair and was dressed in velvet leggings and a leather jerkin. He wore rope upon rope of colorful beads over his bare chest. He was meditatively feeding corn kernels to a clutch of chickens.

Mosca needed answers and she had before her, presumably, a fairy, alone and distracted. What were her resources? A wedge of cheese and the farmer's rope, draped over her shoulder like a sash. The fairy looked harmless enough, but she had been tricked once already and was not in a hurry to do it again.

She uncoiled a length of rope and made a loop with it. Then she crept as softly as she could towards the fountain. She was in reaching distance of her target when a ginger cat shot underfoot, yowling. Mosca tried to avoid it and stumbled.

The fairy looked up, startled, but Mosca had already turned her stumble into a throw – the loop of rope went around his shoulders. She drew the loop closed, bracing for the struggle.

But there was no struggle. The fairy sagged against the rope, fell forward with his back to the fountain, and let loose a hideous wail.

"Quit your caterwauling!" hissed Mosca, crouching down to look him in the face. "You big baby, I just need to ask you some questions!"

The wailing gave place to whimpering, and then to aggrieved muttering. "Demon! Torturer! Free me at once!" He writhed and spat. "The touch of cold iron is freezing me to my heart! Oh! My dear mother!"

Nonplussed, Mosca repeated, "Cold iron?" She studied the rope in her hands. The weave was shot through with metal threads. _That wily old farmer,_ she thought, warmly.

"Is this the doom come to us?" the fairy continued. "I feel the abyss closing on me!"

Mosca studied him critically. His angular face was drawn, and the bare skin of his arms was angry red where the rope touched it. His eyes – silver, she observed, just like the cats – were glassy with pain. He did not appear to be dying, though.

"I don't want to hurt you," said Mosca. This, she was surprised to find, was true; he had been feeding chickens and he had called for his mother. If this was more fairy trickery, it was highly effective. "Just tell me where to find the poet."

" _What_ poet? I am but a lowly courtier – "

"The one your precious queen kidnapped last night!"

"Oh, _that_ poet," said the fairy, rather sulkily. He was beginning, ever so slightly, to rally.

"Yes, that one! Where is he?"

"To displease Her Majesty – would not be wise – I would join my fellows…" His silver gaze strayed towards the silver-eyed cats, who had gathered at a safe distance to watch the proceedings.

"Oh," said Mosca. "Still – I need you to tell me."

He shook his head and kept his mouth shut.

Mosca looked at the rope in her hands. If a touch was so painful, if she tied him up… She shook her head. "But I'm a demon and a torturer, like you said, willing to use cold iron on you. Your queen can't blame you for giving way to me. Right?"

"Of course she can! What do you imagine her to be? She is a _queen_ – "

The two goats, who had browsed over to watch the proceedings, bolted with a chorus of distressed bleating. From the direction of the wall came the yowling of several cats. Then Mosca's erstwhile guide appeared at her shoulder.

"Found you!" it boomed. "What are we doing with this fairy?"

"I – we – you came after me!" Mosca's voice came out slightly strangled with relief.

"Of course I did! I'm helping!" It sniffed at the fairy, who huddled ineffectually against the fountain. "So?"

"He's telling me where to find Mr. Clent," said Mosca. To the fairy: "Go on."

"Are you allied to _that thing_?" he asked in a hushed voice.

"I am."

"Then – it is beyond me. The one you seek is in the Skyward Pavilion. I'll tell you how to find it." And he did. Mosca had an uncomfortable sensation of his directions taking root in her mind as she listened.

"All right, that's good. Now… I can't have you warning your queen, see. Someone'll come along and find you, soon enough…"

The fairy worked out the drift of this and gave vent to some colorful complaints, and Mosca did feel bad (as much about leaving behind the rope, which she had no means of cutting, as about leaving the fairy in an awkward position).

"Look," she said over his complaints, "this way you'll have proof that you didn't talk to me by choice… And… it can't be all that bad bein' a cat…"

The fairy did not accept this view of things with the best grace, but he did settle slightly. The ginger cat that had attempted to trip Mosca had come to sit on the lip of the fountain near the fairy's head.

Mosca called over the creature, which had wandered off to strike up a friendly acquaintance with the winged pony.

As they passed through one of the arched doorways together, Mosca said, "Cold iron won't kill him, will it?"

"Oh, no. I don't think so." After a pause: "Does it matter?"

"Sort of," said Mosca, uneasily.

The palace was no palace at all, only a series of courtyards linked by arcades. These had rooms opening onto them, and at one open door Mosca heard the cacophony of what she was certain was a fairy domestic argument. Aside from that incident, the place was unnervingly empty, with a feeling of disuse hanging over it. Many of the passages and courts felt as though they had been abandoned for years. _That's what happens when you turn all your subjects into cats,_ Mosca thought.

In this way they reached the Skyward Pavilion, a ramshackle construction made of painted canvas and a few shoddy walls, which took up most of an oblong courtyard.

"I'm going to go in and get Mr. Clent," she said. "Can you stay out here and make trouble if it looks like the queen's coming?"

"I can do trouble," said the creature eagerly. "I like trouble."

"Me, too," said Mosca, ignoring another wave of unease. She drew back the curtain at the entrance of the Skyward Pavilion and slipped inside.

 

Soft light emanated from the canvas walls. It created a menacingly shadowless interior, which made you wonder what the shadows were getting up to where you could not see them. The room was done up in pale blues, pale yellows, pale pinks, and a hint of pale green. It was like stepping into the clouds at sunrise, except that it was all queasily insipid. Further it was stuffed with ornate furniture all topped with unappealing ornaments. Mosca was reminded vividly of a tinker's cart. Her already jaded view of fairy aesthetic sensibilities took a fresh hit.

In his dark, much-patched coat, Eponymous Clent stuck out like a blot on the pastel landscape. He was stretched in an attitude of utmost weariness upon a pale pink and white divan piled high with overstuffed cushions.

"Mr. Clent," Mosca hissed, "get up, I'm here to rescue you."

Without so much as unclosing an eyelid, Clent answered, "Pray leave me in peace."

"But Mr. Clent – "

"Peace! I do not require your rescue, or anything further from you, madam. I discharge you of your secretarial duties. I am precisely where I belong and where I desire to be, embosomed by a superior society that is alive to my inestimable talents."

He had not for a moment abandoned his recumbent position. This was worse than Mosca had anticipated.

She approached the divan. "They don't care about your talents, you noodle, they want to suck out your soul! Get up!" So saying, she grappled Clent upright. He slumped back against his cushions and glared balefully past her. He looked mortally tired and rather ill.

"You malign the noblest spirit, the most sensitive ethereal being, the finest and most magnanimous monarch ever to reign beneath the earth. Her Majesty – "

" – is a no-good cheatin' fiend! She turns courtiers that annoy her into cats and then she doesn't get anyone to feed them!"

"No doubt they deserved it. As I was saying, Her Majesty is a patron that an artist such as myself might encounter only once in a blessed lifetime, and _she_ does not call me a noodle. Her praise for my offerings has been so perspicacious, so luminously clear-sighted, so exquisitely flattering whilst unwaveringly bending towards the flame of truth. She has appointed me her royal bard and commissioned a heroic ballad on the subject of her rule. I cannot think of her without the keenest gratitude and respect."

And he sighed, looking so dreamy that Mosca wondered briefly whether he had been enchanted, before remembering who she had to deal with.

"Couldn't find you any fancier clothes, though, could she?"

Clent examined the fraying cuff of his coat indifferently. "The prevailing court fashions, alas, are not suitable for a man of my position in life. But be assured that Her Majesty has been most gracious in providing for me."

"And she's been runnin' you ragged, has she? 'Cause you look all worn out, Mr. Clent."

"I confess my duties have been taxing – the attentions of the courtiers are a far cry from what I have lately perforce accustomed myself to. But it has been the sweetest of burdens, the mildest – "

"She's been nibbling away bits of your soul, and you've been too flattered off your gourd to notice."

"What do you care?" asked Clent in sharp, frosty tones. His eyes were clear and sparking. He stood, crossing his arms. " _You_ sold me to her like a pig for the slaughter."

And that, at last, seemed to be the real trouble; Mosca was almost relieved.

"I never meant to!" she cried. "I was only cross with you for not believing me when I said they'd made us back at that village – "

"You cannot blame me for trusting my decades of experience over your unreliable flashes of instinct!"

"Unreliable my big toe! I was right!"

"In this instance, circumstances did bear you out – "

"And it weren't no decades of experience made you ignore me, you just thought you could talk your way out of it!"

"I did, perhaps, overestimate the village elders' capacity to heed the call of reason." Clent sniffed ostentatiously. Again in that frosty tone, he said, "Whatever minor errors of judgment I might have fallen into, child, it does not give you leave to bargain me away to the first comer."

"I said I didn't mean it! That ethereal leasing-monger tricked me."

"You have taken your sweet time coming to rectify the situation, if that is indeed the case."

"She addled my brains and made me forget all about you, but I remembered and came as quick as I could, and I'll swear to that on anything you like if you'll stop being a pig-headed fustilarian and come away!"

"No," said Clent. "You may do whatever pleases you, madam, but I am staying right here. If you do not leave me to my meditations, I shall be forced, very much against my inclination, to call for assistance." And he navigated the crush of furniture until he came to a powder blue chair painted with lilies. He sank into it and would not look at her again.

Mosca did not take his threat of calling for help seriously. Even if she had, she might still have kicked over the nearest gilded end table in sheer frustration. The lumpy crystal shepherds and shepherdesses that had stood on it made an excellent noise as they shattered into dust. She further knocked over a longcase clock and a flimsy set of shelves displaying an ugly tea set, then shredded a number of the overstuffed cushions from the divan until flying down filled the air. Then she marched over and hauled Clent out of his chair by the back of his coat.

"I don't care what you want, Mr. Clent!" she bellowed into his ear. "That fairy gulled me and I came through every kind of magical impediment in song and story to get here and I'm not letting her have you and that's the end of it and you're not to say one more word unless you're agreeing with me or I'll clout you over the head and drag you out by your toes. You got all that?"

Breathing heavily, Mosca uncurled her clenched fingers from Clent's coat, allowing him to straighten up.

He put a hand up to his ear and winced. Then, quietly, meeting her eyes for the first time, he said, "You _are_ in a state, Mosca."

While not precisely constituting agreement, this was more encouraging than anything he had yet said. "Are you coming?"

"Now that you have called it to my attention, I have been feeling somewhat less than perfectly well. Perhaps the pace of court life does not agree with my delicate constitution."

Mosca snorted.

"They are forever asking me to talk, talk, talk – and you know I am not averse to the sound of my own voice, Mosca, but one does begin to grow hoarse after a time. I had the greatest difficulty excusing myself for a brief rest – which you so boorishly interrupted. And again," Clent continued, brightly, "it is possible I would be neglecting my responsibilities towards you if I remained here in perpetuity." Grudgingly, he added, "You do appear to have exerted yourself on my behalf – is there a single tree in the vicinity left unmarked by your blood? – allowing always that my predicament is of your making."

"Is that a yes?"

"Oh – very well," said Clent with an expansive shrug. "If you can indeed deliver me from this pastel cesspit – lead on, madam, by all means."

Mosca nodded, satisfied. Then she remembered the crack under the wall, which she had only narrowly fit through. Clent could not leave by that route. Short of laying hands on explosives, it would have to be the front gate for them. She hoped it was easier to leave by than to enter.

"I've got someone to help me," she said. "It'll probably be all right."

She turned to the doorway – and saw the Queen of the Fairies standing there.

 

"You were saying?" muttered Clent.

The queen clapped her hands once, sharply. She looked more like her disguise than Mosca would have guessed. She had the same apple-cheeked country girl face as before, but it looked vastly older and somewhat blurred. The wide-set eyes, of course, were silver. There were flowers that glittered like jewels twined in her voluminous black hair, and she wore a trailing, fluttering dress striped in greens and golds. She was, subtly but unmistakably, inhuman, and Mosca felt power emanating from her so fiercely she could not believe she had missed it the first time.

"You aren't going back on our bargain, are you, dear child?" the queen asked. "We agreed. I take the poet off your hands in exchange for helping you find your way. Nearly all the benefit was on your side, it would seem. What can you possibly have to complain of?"

"It wasn't a fair bargain!" shrieked Mosca. "I didn't even know we was bargainin'!"

A flash of irritation crossed the queen's face. "Never mind your quibbling." She seemed to grow taller. The room darkened and the air crackled, as though the shadows were stirring from their sleep and cracking their joints.

Clent cleared his throat. "Your Majesty," he began, "please believe that I have been humbled by the hospitality and condescension shown to me by so elevated an individual as your glorious self. However, my mischievous secretary has represented to me that I am needed in the lands above. Further I do not believe my life and freedom were hers to bargain with, so your contract with her cannot have any validity – "

Mosca, who could see the queen's fuse burning short, shot him an urgent glare. For a wonder, he stopped talking.

"Very good, little wordsmith," said the queen with a mechanical laugh. "Your quick words were leading you into danger. You see, the child has a claim upon you. Therefore she can bargain with your – time. You hear me say this, and you must know I can speak no lies."

"But your whole so-called bargain is a lie!" Mosca burst out. "You can't have a contract without both people meaning to make one! Well, can you?"

"I did lead you out of the forest," said the queen.

"I never asked you to, you know, _and_ I never said I'd give you anything if you did. Tell me another."

At this juncture, Clent interpolated, in a martyred voice, "I rue the day I left her alone with a lawyer. The poor man barely escaped with his wits, and you see what she is now."

The queen, ever so slightly, began to look concerned.

Mosca went on: "I didn't mean to make a contract, and you can't have missed it. You made sure I didn't know which way was up. I didn't have a chance to get good terms or nothing! So you sayin' we have a bargain was one big lie, 'cause we can't have!"

"And so?" asked the queen.

"And so you've got to let Mr. Clent go!"

The queen's lips pursed and she sniffed once, angrily. The shadows settled back down to their rest, and the queen stepped aside, leaving the doorway clear. "You have spoken truly," she said.

"So we can leave?" said Mosca. "Both of us?"

"Do what you like," said the queen.

"No, say it. Say we can leave, and you won't try to stop us or hurt us in any way."

The queen threw up her arms. "This is all the trouble with mortal kind. They win one argument and get run away with pride." The darkness returned, thickening the air. The shadows were milling and pressing now. Mosca felt them at her throat, at her eyes, squeezing under her nails. It was growing hard to breathe. "You will never leave here," said the queen.

Then the doorway behind her burst into flame.

The fierce new light banished the pressing shadows.

The queen leapt back, not quickly enough to avoid flying sparks. They caught and ignited on her trailing dress and in her hair. "No! No, this can't be!" She whirled on Mosca with glittering, fearful eyes. "You?"

Mosca, uncertain just what she was being accused of, nonetheless adopted a smug expression. "We'll be leaving now," she said.

The queen snarled at her, then vanished in a blink.

Clent held up a penknife with a silver filigree handle and a wicked-looking blade. "Shall we?" So saying, he stepped over to a patch of canvas wall well away from the fire and sliced a long gash in it. Mosca helped him tear at it until it was wide enough to crawl out of.

"Where to now?" asked Clent, when they had moved away from the pavilion, which was crackling with fast-spreading flames. Now they were outside, they could see that several other structures were similarly on fire. The air smelled strongly of smoke.

"Well…" said Mosca.

Before she could admit she was at a temporary loss, her sometime guide landed in front of them. It was twice as large as it had been before, and it had sprouted a pair of spiny wings.

"Oh, good!" it cried. "You found your friend!"

"He's not my friend," said Mosca automatically, staring.

"You called him your friend," said the creature.

"I didn't." Then: "I didn't _mean_ it." Shaking her head, she said: "How can we get out? Mr. Clent can't go by the crack under the wall."

There was a pause as the creature considered this.

"What in the name of all the stars and little fishes is _that_ chimerical monstrosity?" squawked Clent, whose mouth had been working silently during Mosca's exchange with the creature.

"It's helping me," Mosca said weakly.

"Ah," Clent replied.

"The front gate," said the creature, unperturbed. "It's the only way. I'll lead you there. Follow me!"

Then it took a running leap and rose up into the sky, its wings beating with vast leathery snaps. As it flew over the collapsing, flaming pavilion, its beak hinged open wider than any bird's, and gouts of flame poured out from it onto the wrecked structure. The heat of the conflagration became so great that Mosca and Clent had to edge away from it.

"Mosca…"

"Yes, Mr. Clent…"

"Is there the slightest, most inconsequential possibility that your new acquaintance is a dragon?"

"Could be," Mosca admitted.

Clent favored her with a look of profound anguish.

"Whatever it is, it's faster than lighting, so we'd better run."

They ran. It was not as troublesome as Mosca had anticipated to follow the creature – the dragon, rather. It paused in its flight often to spew more flames, though that hardly seemed necessary now.

Once, dashing into a building that from the outside was no bigger than a shed, they ended up in an enormous dilapidated ballroom. The doorway behind them being blocked by flames, they raced across the dusty floor to the doors at the far side. Above them, the numerous crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling burst one by one into flame and came crashing down.

Somehow they reached the second set of doors and rushed out into a comparatively secure but entirely unfamiliar courtyard. Mosca was obliged to yell herself hoarse before the dragon found them again.

At last, both somewhat singed and ash-coated, coughing frequently, they came in sight of the gate. It was a single slab of green marble set in a stone frame, and it was shut and barred. About two dozen fairies stood with their backs to it, looking very afraid. Their clothes were both garish and alarmingly skimpy; if this was the prevailing court fashion, Mosca did not wonder Clent had foregone the favor of a new wardrobe.

The dragon gave a whooping call, then alighted beside Mosca and Clent.

"There we go," it said. "They'll open it in a moment. You can get out then."

"Hang on!" wheezed Mosca. "You aren't coming with us? I need you to lead me through the forest!"

"You do not know the way?" said Clent, clearing his throat. "The soundness of your rescue plan continues to astonish me."

"You won't need me," said the dragon. "It's easier by the front gate. It'll be even easier once I've fulfilled my destiny and killed the queen and eaten her heart. The ways will straighten out then." Looking up suddenly, it said, "Oh, good!"

The winged grey pony set down rather heavily nearby, nearly knocking Mosca, who was closest, off her feet with the power of its wingbeats.

"You'll have to ride him out," said the dragon.

"Both of us?" asked Mosca. She wanted to ask about this business of killing the queen and eating her heart, but there did not seem to be time for that.

The dragon answered, "He's very sturdy."

The pony was also very patient as Mosca and Clent, who seemed to have caught a case of giddiness from breathing the smoke, became very silly over their attempts to mount. When they were both seated more or less securely, Mosca draped over the pony's neck and Clent balanced over its wings, the dragon said, "I'll get them to open the gate now. Thank you for letting me help you! I couldn't get in otherwise – nasty curse, very complicated – I've been trying ever so long to get round it!"

"You're welcome," said Mosca in a hollow voice, realizing all at once how the dragon had used her. It must have sought her out after seeing her encounter with the fairy queen. Perhaps it had even frightened her so she would run into the queen and acquire a grievance.

The dragon was causing further havoc by the gate. The defenders began to scatter. Mosca was relieved to see her own fairy informant among them, looking none the worse for his captivity. He caught sight of her as he fled and shouted, "Demon! Doom-bringer! You have brought the dread beast upon us! It will destroy us all!"

"I think it only wants your queen!" Mosca bawled back.

"Good to know!" the fairy bellowed, disappearing into the fiery maze of the palace. Mosca hoped he was going to help the fairies-turned-cats and the other animals.

The gate opened, and Mosca saw why the dragon had insisted on summoning them a winged steed – there was a span of water at least thirty feet wide before the palace. On the far side, there was a thin strip of clear grass before the forest encroached.

Clent announced, "I will enjoy this not at all," and then he kneed the pony into motion.

It took a bouncing run at the gate, only lifting off the ground at the very edge of the water. The whole flight lasted less than a minute, and Mosca, try as she might, spent it with her eyes tightly shut and her fingers frozen in the pony's mane. Then it landed, none too gracefully, and she and Clent tumbled off onto the grass. The pony shook itself all over, then trotted sedately towards the trees and disappeared.

"I hope that dragon looks after it," Mosca said, when she had her breath back.

Clent did not answer.

They stayed where they were, hacking and wheezing and watching the palace burn, which was easy to do now that the walls were behaving like ordinary walls. The fairy defenders, in pairs and small groups, came to the open gate and became indistinct glittering forms that drifted away with the smoke. There were several explosions that rang in the air and in Mosca's ears. The walls began to fall in.

Then all at once they were looking, not at a palace across the water, but at a smooth lake nestled in a forest. The palace was simply – gone.

The sight of the empty water filled Mosca with heavy dread. She consoled herself by recalling that numerous wisps of glittering mist had gone up and away during the last of the explosions – perhaps, after all, it had been her fairy and his friends in the courtyard, escaping. She had not realized until then how much she cared.

"Did you bring anything to eat?" Clent asked eventually. "I have reason to believe I have been subsisting entirely on new moss and cobwebs, or something of that distasteful ilk."

Mosca found she still had her wedge of cheese, somewhat melted. Wordlessly, she handed it over.

 

The sunlight was green on the meadow above the farm. The wildflowers had faded.

"You didn't really want to stay there, did you, Mr. Clent?" asked Mosca.

"In perfect honesty," Clent replied, "no. I found the position insupportable."

"What would you have done if I'd got fed up arguing and decided I was better off leaving you behind?"

"After you had gone to all that trouble? That would have been entirely out of character. Unthinkable, in fact."

Mosca, who had not seriously thought of it in the moment, said, "So you kept me dangling to get back for your hurt feelings?"

"Your idiom is singularly effective at making the most innocuous actions sound petty and childish," Clent complained.

Once the palace had disappeared, presumably upon the death of the queen, it had been a simple matter to find their way to the road, and thence to the meadow. Mosca thought it was the next afternoon after she had set off, but she could not be sure. She stopped once more at the farmyard gate beside the carving of Goodman Thimblefeather. Was there something hound-like about the Beloved's build? Probably someone had got hold of the wrong end of the dragon's story. Mosca was not sure what that meant for all the other Beloved.

And on the subject of stories –

"Bet you get a great poem out of this, Mr. Clent."

"Mosca, do you really think me so grasping that I would spin my own near death in a dastardly den of the fair folk into a tale for mere profit?"

"Yes."

"As a matter of fact, some choice phrases have come to mind," Clent admitted. "It would not be wise to ignore the muse…"

"Not wise at all, Mr. Clent."

"I will have to take care not to verge upon blasphemy, however." It seemed he too had noticed the carving of Thimblefeather and its more than coincidental resemblance to the dragon.

"Yeah," said Mosca. "Do you really think – "

"Not another word! I refuse to enter the theological fray with you until I have eaten a square meal and slept in a real bed. It has been a day overfull of happenings in every conceivable respect." Meditatively, he added, "Mosca Mye – Doom-bringer."

Mosca could not decide whether she liked the sound of that. It sounded important, at least. "The queen did deserve to have doom brought on her, didn't she?"

"Oh, most certainly," said Clent, off-handed.

"And the palace was all fallin' down anyway, and most of the fairies had been turned into cats…"

"To be sure," said Clent, in a voice that made it clear he was no longer listening to her. He was striding single-mindedly towards the farmhouse.

Mosca hurried to keep up.

Then Saracen burst out of the barn, followed by the mean old cow, which was in turn followed by the farmer's wife. The farmer himself brought up the rear of the procession, brandishing a spade.

Mosca tucked her concerns away to look at later and broke into a run.


End file.
